{"id":45,"date":"2024-04-01T03:35:58","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T03:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/?p=45"},"modified":"2024-04-01T03:38:47","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T03:38:47","slug":"water-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/2024\/04\/01\/water-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 On average I use around 1287 gallons of water a day. This includes virtual water usage. This is lower than the average American who uses 1802 gallons of water. Some aspects of my life that help lower my water footprint are only having one load of laundry a week (sometimes two), not having a car (having to walk everywhere on campus), I have no animals at school, and I do not have a yard or garden to water here at Dickinson. Some things that increase my water footprint is that I love to shop (both in person and online), typically my showers are over 15 minutes, I have 4 indoor plants that I water once a week (they are pretty small, so they don\u2019t need too much water). Compared to the average Americans, many do have cars which quickly increase their water footprint. As well, families tend to have way more loads of laundry. Especially when there are little kids so spill and get messy quickly, so they have multiple outfit changes in a day.<\/p>\n

For many Americans, myself included, water has never been an issue. I grew up in western New York, surrounded by two great lakes, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and the New York<\/p>\n

Finger Lakes in Upstate NY<\/p><\/div>\n

Finger Lakes. The idea of not having access to fresh water is a foreign one. The first time I saw a desert was when I was 18. My family and I went on a trip to visit my aunt and uncle in Los Angeles. We flew into Phoenix and drove through the desert to the Grand Canyon then to Las Vegas. Ironically, it did down poor on our drive from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas. While we were in Vegas, we visited the Hoover Dam. Looking at Lake Mead was probably the first time in my life I have been able to see global warming in action. Yes, it is easy to sit in a classroom and learn about climate change but to see the differences in water level was drastic.<\/p>\n

Even though there are places in the US that have limited access to water. However, compared to many of the countries in the Middle East they have access to water. The per capita water usage for the US is 7800 liters a day (Water Footprint Network) . The only country that uses more water per person out of all the countries I looked at, including the Middle East, North America, and Western Europe, is the United Arab Emirates (UAE).\u00a0 The per capita usage is 8600 liters a day (Water Footprint Network). It is important to note that Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and Iraq had no data available. It is likely that Qatar and Bahrain also have a high-water usage. I decided to look at per person water usage as I felt that it represented more accurately how much water is available for each person.<\/p>\n

While looking at the water usage for different countries in the Arab Peninsula I noticed the drastic difference between Yemen and the UAE. Yemen\u2019s total population is 18.5 million people, and they use around 17 000 million M3 <\/sup>of water a year (Water Footprint Network). The UAE\u2019s population is much smaller at 3.33 million people but still use 10 000 million M3 <\/sup>of water a year. Per capita Yemen uses 2500 liters a day and UAE uses 8600 liters a day (Water Footprint Network). Water footprint is not the only difference between Yemen and UAE. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Peninsula. While the UAE does not have many natural means of getting fresh water, like Yemen, they are able to both purchase water and purchase the goods that use water (agriculture).<\/p>\n

The UAE is working towards increasing their hospitality and tourism industries. This is significant to water usage as having access to fresh water is extremely important if you want tourist to visit your country or city. As well, needing access to goods that need water. With the wealth of the government, they are easily able to import any goods they do not naturally have access too. As well, the government could impose policies to help limit their water footprint, but in reality, it would hurt the country economically to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 On average I use around 1287 gallons of water a day. This includes virtual water usage. This is lower than the average American who uses 1802 gallons of water. Some aspects of my life that help lower my water footprint are only having one load of laundry a week (sometimes two), not having a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5452,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/bennettg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}